Kelly McParland: Ontario Liberals get hit by their own hydro blame boomerang

If the people running the power companies can’t be blamed for all the waste, boondoggles and faulty decision-making that has pushed bills through the roof, then it follows that the Liberals must get credit for doing it all on their own

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne announces an average 25 per cent cut to hydro rates during a news conference in Toronto, Ont. on Thursday March 2, 2017.

If you’re the energy minister in a province filled with angry voters seething at exorbitant electricity bills, the last thing you want is to find yourself asserting that the $4.85 million paid to one of the power companies’ chief executives has nothing to do with the outrageous level of monthly charges.

But Glenn Thibeault wanted the job — he even quit the NDP to join Ontario’s Liberal government — so there he was before the cameras, piously insisting that the rich pay package of Hydro One boss Mayo Schmidt was really just a pittance in the grand scheme of things.

“The salary of the CEO has nothing to do with the rates that we’re seeing on our bills,” Thibeault insisted. “The rates are set by the Ontario Energy Board, they’re not set by the company.”

Notice the clever reference to “our” bills, as in: “Hey, I live here as well. I’m stuck with the same pain for 14 years of Liberal mismanagement as you are.”

OK, Mr. Minister, good try. Regrettably, Thibeault’s timing was a bit unfortunate. This is the time of year when the annual Sunshine List is released — the tally of Ontario public employees earning $100,000 and above. And gee, who should top the list? Is that Jeff Lyash’s name we see up there? Why, yes it is: the chief executive of Ontario Power Generation, which produces the power that Hydro One delivers to Ontario businesses and households, made $1.2 million last year, beating out the 123,409 top-earning people on the public payroll for first place.

Together, that means the two utilities paid their bosses over $6 million last year. And Lyash could do even better next year, since OPG declined a request from Premier Kathleen Wynne to lower the cap it is willing to pay its CEO, which has been set at $3.8 million.

Why, you ask, is it necessary to pay so much to executives at companies that so antagonize the people they are meant to serve? Stop me if you’ve heard this before: it’s because, says Thibeault, the government needs to ensure that qualified people are in charge.

“I get that it’s concerning for people but really, if we were to look at taking all of the salaries away of all the executives, we wouldn’t be addressing one cent on any one bill,” Thibeault said.

Busy defending others, the minister may not have realized that he was inadvertently condemning his own government in the process. If the people running the power companies can’t be blamed for all the waste, boondoggles and faulty decision-making that has pushed bills through the roof, then it follows that the Liberals must get credit for doing it all on their own.

This is not the message Wynne wishes to send as she gears up for next year’s election. Hydro bills — everyone in Ontario still refers to the electricity system as if it were entirely based on hydro power — have become the No. 1 concern among voters, outpacing all the usual worries about health care, taxes, education costs, etc. Wynne has scrambled to soothe the temper of frustrated consumers, offering up rebates, tax holidays and trite excuses about how, a decade and a half ago, the Liberals were left with an ageing system by the previous government.

The Liberals maintain the mess they inherited was so bad they had no choice but to spend heavily to repair the damage. Thibeault says it cost $35 billion in all. No, no, it was $50 billion, claims Wynne. Both appear to assume Ontarians will be impressed by the figure, failing to appreciate that many voters feel large parts of it has been wasteful and unnecessary. Like the failed “smart meter” program. The gas plants closed for electoral reasons. The billions in solar and wind installations that operate sporadically and produce power the province doesn’t need. The egregious contracts with alternative-energy providers that saddle the province with decades of heavily-subsidized, high-price power. The exports sold at a loss to Americans.

How much does the waste add up to? No one can be certain. As much as $30 billion? That’s not far off the $37 billion Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk calculates Ontarians overpaid between 2006-2014.

Given such astronomical figures, Minister Thibeault is probably correct: even the most ridiculously overpaid power executives couldn’t earn enough to put a dent in the total. You’d have to have thousands and thousands of power workers, all earning fat salaries, to make even the slightest impact.

Which, as it happens, we do: the 2016 Sunshine List is home to more than 7,600 OPG employees earning more than $100,000 a year, far more than any other employer spending public money. How many others could be found at Hydro One isn’t known; only its top five earners are required to disclose their pay since Wynne began selling off chunks of the company to raise money for her cash-strapped government.

On Monday Thibeault sought to shift the spotlight, complaining that the opposition Progressive Conservatives refuse to reveal their policy plans. Tory leader Patrick Brown “doesn’t want to do anything other than just ride into winning government in 2018. Government takes a lot of hard work. You’ve got to make tough decisions. He’s continuing to take the easy way out on this,” he complained.

And why not? If hard work and tough decisions are responsible for the calamity the Liberals have created, Brown is wise to stay well clear of it.